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Great Falls homeowners thought they had found 30-year-old pieces of a woman’s body in their bathroom on Monday, but today, it turns out, the bones are likely those of an animal.

The bones were discovered at 1305 7th Ave. N., the home of Doreen and Allen Lemire.

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Photos of the bones were sent to the Montana State Crime Lab, said Great Falls Police Sgt. Glen Stinar, and the bones were in the process of being transferred. However, Stinar reported that on Tuesday afternoon, a detective had heard preliminary reports that they were just animal bones.

However, a spokeswoman for the Montana Department of Justice, which oversees the crime lab, said they hadn’t seen the bones yet.

“At this point the lab hasn’t been overly involved,” said Judy Beck, public information officer.The story is all too eerie, and the bones of a woman being discovered where her husband lived when she was reported missing in 1975 seemed like a cold case being resolved.

Leslee Reynolds Larson has been missing since 1975, when her husband Dennis Larson reported to police that while picnicking at the Prickly Pear Creek in Lewis and Clark County, his wife got swept up in a current and drowned.

Her body was never recovered and it is unclear if she was Larson’s first or second wife.Larson was convicted in Maine in 1987 of killing his third wife, Kathy Frost Larson, by pushing her off an 80-foot cliff at Acadia National Park.

He was serving a 50-year sentence in the Maine State Prison and died there in 2000.

Great Falls homeowners may have stumbled onto the 30-year-old bones of a murdered woman while remodeling their bathroom on Monday.

The bones were discovered at 1305 7th Ave. N., now the home of Doreen and Allen Lemire — but then a vacant lot next door to the home of a man later convicted of a different murder.

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Photos of the bones were sent to the Montana State Crime Lab, said Great Falls Police Sgt. Glen Stinar, and the bones were in the process of being transferred.

Lt. Rob Moccasin, the detective on the case, said police haven't yet determined if these are the bones of Leslee Reynolds Larson, a woman reported missing in 1975 by her husband Dennis Larson."First of all, we've got to find out what kind of bones they were," Moccasin said. "We don't want to get all excited because we don't know yet if they are human or animal."

Leslee Reynolds Larson has been missing since 1975, when her husband Dennis Larson reported to police that while picnicking at the Prickly Pear Creek in Lewis and Clark County, his wife got swept up in a current and drowned.

Her body was never recovered, and it is unclear if she was Larson's first or second wife.

Larson was convicted in Maine in 1987 of killing his third wife, Kathy Frost Larson, by pushing her off an 80-foot cliff at Acadia National Park.

A year after his Maine conviction, according to Great Falls Tribune archives, authorities in Cascade County searched the properties at 1301 and 1303 7th Ave. N. where Larson had lived in the 1970s.

In October 2000, according to archives, authorities in Lewis and Clark County charged Dennis Larson for Leslee Larson's murder after he admitted to a state investigator that he had pushed her into the stream near Wolf Creek in June of 1975.

He was serving a 50-year sentence in the Maine State Prison. On New Year's Eve of 2000, Larson committed suicide by jumping out of a third-floor prison window onto rocks.

Doreen Lemire and her husband were convinced when they recovered these bones on Monday they were those of a human. The bones were discovered after they moved a vanity cabinet out of their bathroom and discovered an approximately 3-foot-wide hole in the concrete.

She said they bought the house in February and had heard rumors that a woman might be buried there.

Kristafer Lock has tried to forget seeing a translucent-like woman in a white nightgown walking the hallways of his mom’s house.

But he’s not ruling anything out at this point.

On Monday, his mom Doreen Lemire and her husband Allen discovered what could possibly be the bones of a woman beneath their bathroom at 1305 7th Ave. N. The woman may have been killed by her husband 32 years ago.

Police have not determined if they are animal bones or human bones. But Leslee Reynolds Larson went missing in 1975, her husband Dennis Larson lived on the same lot, he was later convicted in Maine of killing his third wife, and he admitted in 2000 to killing Leslee.

That has 18-year-old Lock thinking seriously about what he saw.

He described the ghost as a woman in a white dress with a rose print. She would appear in the hallway between the living room and kitchen, where the bathroom is located, too. Sometimes he would see her outside.

“I try not to pay too much attention to her,” Lock said. “I don’t believe in spirits; I don’t believe in ghosts.”

But he’s not the only one that has supposedly seen a female ghost hovering in the house.

For years, people have described the house at 1305 7th Ave. N., as well as the duplex at 1301-1303 7th Ave. N., as haunted.

According to city directories, Dennis Larson lived in the 1301 duplex until sometime in 1979 or 1980.

Jody McCurdy lived in the Lemire’s house from 1998 to 2002. Her son Malachi Dusek was just 5 years old around that time and often told her of seeing a woman in a white nightgown walking through the house, holding a purse.

When on Wednesday, she read the news of human bones possibly being discovered in her old rental home, McCurdy said she “went numb.”

“We had so many problems in that house,” McCurdy said.

She had a mice problem and at one point in time believed there was carbon monoxide poisoning in the house as well. She also had two miscarriages while living in the house and one premature baby died.

“I just figured it was like a curse,” she said.

The mice, she said, used to come from a hole underneath the sink in the bathroom – the same place the Lemires found the bones on Monday when remodeling their bathroom.

“The smell just was like decaying wood,” McCurdy said.

Malachi, now 11, said he once followed the woman who appeared in a night gown from one of the bedrooms toward the living room, thinking it was his mom.

When he yelled for his mom, Malachi said she responded that she was in the bathroom.

After Dennis Larson was arrested and charged with murdering his wife in Maine in 1988, police in Great Falls once again opened the investigation into Leslee’s death and searched the duplex where the Larsons had lived.

Pat Goodover owned the duplex for a few years in the 1980s when that investigation was initiated.

He said at that time, some of the tenants reported seeing a ghost and that those tenants who had dogs would never go near the dirt-floor basement.

“This was your classic haunted house,” Goodover said. “Whether you believed in ghosts or not – something was there.”

He described the duplex as two separate townhouses with a main floor, second floor and a basement that was shared between the two. It may have been a single-family residence at one point.

The duplex was razed in 2005 and is now one big corner lot owned by the Lemires, according to city records.

Goodover said the house that is now 1305 7th Ave. N was a garage at the time and was owned by a different person.

In the west-facing unit, there was once a fireplace where Goodover said police searched for clues. On the east-facing unit, he said there was a door that led to nowhere, but had scratch marks like someone was trying to get inside the house.It was like déjà vu to Goodover when he heard news of bones being found – even though the bones haven’t been identified and Goodover tries not to believe in ghosts.

“I don’t have an opinion on that,” he said. “There are things out there we don’t know.”

According to court documents, Dennis R. Larson confessed to investigators that he pushed his wife, Leslee Gail Reynolds, into Prickly Pear Creek near Wolf Creek and let her drown. Her body has never been found.

The admission came during an interview with Larson at the Maine State Penitentiary in September.

Following his wife’s death, Larson collected a $20,000 life insurance policy he had taken out on her.

Larson is currently serving out a 50-year sentence in Maine for pushing his third wife off a cliff in Acadia National Park in 1987. Larson had taken out a life insurance policy on his third wife, also.

Local court officials are in the process of extradicting Larson from Maine — a process the defendant is fighting.

Lauran

"If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only.

"If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth." The late, great Roberto Clemente.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only.

FROM THE BDN ARCHIVES: Man convicted of pushing wife off 80-foot cliff at Acadia National Park confesses to killing his first wife, tooBy BDN staff and wire reportsPosted April 15, 2011, at 7:03 p.m. Print | E-mail | Facebook | Tweet PUBLISHED ON OCTOBER 12, 2000HELENA, Mont. — The man now serving time for pushing his wife off an 80-foot cliff in Acadia National Park in 1987 has confessed to killing his first wife in 1975 in Montana, according to court documents released this week in Montana.

Dennis R. Larson, 50, admitted to a Montana state investigator on Sept. 14 that he pushed his wife, Leslee R. Larson, into a stream near Wolf Creek on June 19, 1975, and watched her float away in the deep, fast spring runoff. No trace of her body has ever been found. Larson was charged last week.

In 1975, Larson told investigators that his first wife had fallen into the creek and that he had jumped into the fast-moving water in a futile attempt to rescue her. However, the first law officer at the scene reported that Larson was dry and did not appear to have jumped into the stream, the court document said.

Seven years later, after authorities finally ruled his wife dead, Larson collected on a $20,000 life insurance policy.

Larson is serving a 50-year sentence for murder in the Oct. 11, 1987, death of his third wife, Kathy Frost Larson. That case revealed a whirlwind romance, a marriage-and-murder-for-profit scheme, which also involved an insurance policy and a taped confession from Larson that contradicted his earlier statements about Frost’s death. Suspicions about the Great Falls native also prompted Bangor police to blow up packages belonging to Larson, which they suspected might have contained explosives.

According to reports of Larson’s 1989 trial, after his second wife divorced him in May 1987, Larson made what prosecutors described as a temporary trip to Maine with the intention of finding a way to win back his ex-wife. Prosecutors said that he placed personal ads in two Maine newspapers in hopes of finding a new wife.

Kathy Frost, then 25, was one of three women to respond to the ads, and the couple married in September 1987, just seven weeks after their first meeting. The day after they married, Larson took out a life insurance policy on himself and added an accidental death rider for his wife providing double the $200,000 face value of the policy.

Frost’s family and friends had described her as “an extremely desperate, lonely individual who was unable to get a man.” According to testimony during Larson’s trial, Frost had told friends that even though she didn’t love him, she would marry Larson, hoping to learn to love him.

After the marriage, Frost appeared unhappy to friends and complained about her new husband. She told her family that she had made a mistake and would get out of her marriage by telling Larson what she wanted to do during the weekend of Oct. 10 — the weekend that Larson had asked her to go to Bar Harbor. She also told family that she did not want to go to Bar Harbor. Testimony indicated that although she did not enjoy hiking or swimming, and had a strong fear of heights, she agreed to the trip to please her husband.

The couple went to Acadia National Park at dusk on Oct. 11. Larson initially told investigators that they had gone to the sheer vertical drop at Otter Cliffs to look for otters in the water below. He said they had taken different paths and, while they were separated, he heard his wife scream. When he got to the edge of the precipice, he said he saw his wife lying on the rocks, 81 feet below.

As the investigation into Frost’s death continued, Larson made plans to return to Montana. On Nov. 4, he boarded an airplane at Bangor International Airport, but had left several packages on the floor of the BIA terminal.

Maine State Police officers, investigating Frost’s death, notified Bangor police officers that the packages might contain explosives. The investigators had searched Larson’s apartment in Millinocket the day before and had discovered 6½ sticks of dynamite in the garage there.

A demolition team moved the packages out of the airport and exploded them, but found only tools and clothing.

It was while Larson was in Montana that State Police Detective Jeffrey Harmon traveled there to question him about Frost’s death. During a six-hour interview, Larson admitted that he had pushed his wife off the cliff in retaliation after she shoved him and said she was leaving him.

“I pushed her too hard, I guess,” he told Harmon.

The Montana affidavit containing Larson’s confession was ordered released on Tuesday by Justice of the Peace Wally Jewell after three news organizations challenged an earlier order to keep it secret. That order was issued by an acting justice of the peace at the request of Lewis and Clark County Attorney Mike McGrath on the day the murder charged against Larson was filed.

McGrath had argued that disclosing the contents of the document could jeopardize Larson’s right to a fair trial. In his ruling, Jewel said that the request to keep the document secret had to be balanced with the constitutional right to know, which, he said, was not done in this case.

The document does not explain why a state investigator was sent to Maine to question Larson.

Because of the similarity in the deaths of the two women, Montana authorities had reopened the investigation of the death of Leslee R. Larson, in the late 1980s. The state Justice Department got involved in the case in 1998 at the urging of Leslee Larson’s family and the sheriff’s offices in Cascade and Judith Basin counties. Both agencies had been involved in searching for the woman’s body and in the initial investigation.

McGrath has said he will ask that Larson be extradited from Maine to face the murder charge against him, and Public Defender Randi Hood said she believes that process has begun.

The state of Maine has not received a formal request to send Larson to Montana, according to Bob Way, a spokesman for the Maine Attorney General’s office.